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George R. Stewart was not really a national parks person; he was more active in national forests, where he did much of his research. But we met at a small state park, Thornton State Beach, where I was a Ranger. And there, thanks to fellow Ranger Steve Gazzano, we named our nature trail for Stewart, not realizing then how much it would mean to him. Stewart was enthralled with place-naming. To have someplace beautiful named for him was, in his eyes, an exceptional honor.

State park systems grew from the National Park system. So this tale of the founding of the National Park Service is part of the George R. Stewart story:

100 years ago today, the bill establishing the National Park Service was signed.

The National Parks were established before the Service, but there was no coordinated management and things were poorly run. Wealthy businessman (he gave us Twenty Mule Team Borax) and conservationist Stephen T. Mather wanted a Service that would make sure all parks had good management and staffing.

Mather had been escorting a group of influential writers and businessmen, which included the famous photographer of Native Americans Edward S. Curtis, on a strenuous trip along the just-finished John Muir Trail. His assistant, Horace Albright, had stayed in Washington to make sure the bill was passed and signed. As soon as it was passed, Albright took the bill to the White House, in the evening, to get it signed. President Wilson was not well, but he was able to sign the bill and did so at 9 pm. Albright immediately sent a telegram to Mather, who had finished his Mountain Party and was staying with the group at the Palace Hotel in Visalia: “Park Service bill signed nine o’clock last night. Have pen President used in signing for you….”

The opening lines of the Organic Act of the National Park Service still ring as some of the most beautiful legislative language ever written:

“The fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations… is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The world changed that day, and we’ve all benefited. There are now national parks and national park services in many countries, inspired by this action.

Like many lucky folks, I did a stint as a National Park Service Ranger. I worked on Alcatraz, at Grant-Kohrs National Historic Site in Montana, and – on a detail – in the Superintendent’s office at Yellowstone National Park during the Fires of 1988. Since the Superintendent’s office at Yellowstone is a summit of Rangering, it was all downhill from there, and I left the Service in 1992. Yet I’d accomplished a few things in those 6 years:

Helped upgrade the interpretive program from a movie version of Alcatraz history into one which emphasized the roots of the penitentiary idea in the work of Founding Father Benjamin Rush. (And had the rare pleasure of meeting his great-great-great-etc grandson, Benjamin Rush, on one Cellhouse tour.)

Thanks to Ranger Ted Stout and District Ranger Armando Quintero, developed and presented a series of workshops about the history of the National Park Service and UC Berkeley. The Service was born and initially housed at UCB, where Mather and Albright had been students. (Many people don’t realize that the Ranger Stetson is actually the “Senior Sombrero” for Albright’s class of 1912.) (There’s some debate about the year of the Stetson; but the one on display at Berkeley a few years ago had “1912” embossed on the hatband.) Quite by coincidence – or was it a coincidence? – the Mather family showed up on Alcatraz just in time for Stephen T. Mather’s great-grandson, Stephen Mather McPherson II, to be involved in the workshops.)

In a story whose details must remain secret, I unknowingly helped derail the plans of the Superintendent of the GGNRA to “destroy” – his term – the National Park Service.

And in Yellowstone, I was able to build on pre-existing work and bring NASA into the fire effort, thus establishing the concept of NASA-NPS partnerships which continue to this day – most recently, in Craters of the Moon, with the leadership of NASA’s Dr. Chris McKay and Craters of the Moon’s visionary and excellent Chief of Interpretation, Ted Stout.

The Yellowstone effort, informal as it was, is especially rewarding. It was a fulfillment of an idea that came from George R. Stewart’s work, which gave the literate public the first example of the Whole Earth vision, first presented in Ordeal By Hunger: That humans can now understand Earth from the two perspectives of space and ground. Chief of Interpretation at Craters of the Moon National Monument, Ranger Ted Stout, and NASA’s Dr. Chris McKay, have done much to bring that idea into fulfillment.

Now, NASA, under the direction of ISS Expedition 48 Jeff Williams, has illustrated Stewart’s pioneering vision, in honor of the Centennial of the National Park Service. Click on the mission patch to see his video.

Credit for such accomplishments is not always given. But the important thing is that work was done, for the good of the Agency and the public. It’s what public service is all about.

There were rewards, though, in addition to the doing of it.

Connections with Dr. Chris McKay and NASA-Ames Chief Education Officer Garth Hull led to a wonderful career with NASA Education.

An invitation to the Dedication of the Ranger Museum in Yellowstone.

The gift of a biography of Stephen T. Mather, autographed by the Mather generations.

And an unexpected experience in England that reinforced how important the National Park Service is to the world:

Attending a conference on heritage preservation at the University of Warwick, I went down late one morning to get breakfast in the university dining hall. The couple seated across the table were distinguished in appearance and demeanor. He was all in black except for a gold chain of office around his neck.

He said nothing. She nodded. Then asked, “Where are you from?”

“I’m an American, here to attend the conference.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a National Park Service Ranger.”

At that, he put his fork down, looked at me and said, “I say. This is an honor, to meet you.

“Do you get to wear one of those hats?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I would give anything for one of those hats,” he said.

He paused, then said, “You know, I think that if America has an aristocracy, it is the National Park Service Ranger. You represent the best your nation has to offer.”

And he went back to his breakfast.

All the time, his wife was listening with a smile on her face. Now, she asked, “Do you know who he is?”

“No, ma’m.”

“He’s the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

I have one regret about our meeting – I never sent him a hat. But his words showed just how important the National Park Service and its Rangers are, and how important it is to keep that integrity alive – not easy to do in a day of skimpy budgets (except for war) and politically-inspired personnel practices.

The battle continues – the NPS has been weakened by poor funding and poor, political hiring and promotion practices in too many cases. We need another Mather, and a re-creation of the National Park Service.

Yet, this is a day for celebration; and whatever the issues or the challenges, we have this wonderful Agency with us, pointing us down a good path, into a better future.

So let’s give three Huzzahs for the National Park Service, and its dedicated Rangers. People like Ted, John, Phil B., Bob V., and all the others who work for sunsets so we can hike the trails in Mather’s and Muir’s footsteps.

Let us all thank the Mather family – Steve MM and Steve MM II – who carry on the work of their ancestor. Huzzah to the Mathers!

And let’s add one more Huzzah – for the Rangering in the parks that brought me to George R. Stewart.

After five years and 171 posts, reviewing George R. Stewart’s work, reporting on projects being developed to honor him, and describing his influence on human societythis web log about George R. Stewart has come to a milestone. The weblog’s author is moving.

It’s been a luxury to have a comfortable place to research and write about him, and hopefully that’s been reflected in posts that are longer and more readable than ones written on the fly. Now, the author is leaving his comfortable office, and heading out to seek new adventures. This means that there may be gaps in the posts, and posts may be less developed.

Fortunately, this is a milestone in other ways.

For one thing, all of his major work has been described here on this site. So without reading all of Stewart’s books, the fans of some of them can see the intellectual and artistic context in which they are placed. His masterwork Earth Abides, for example, can be seen as the pinnacle of his ecological novels – the books in which the ecosystem, not humans, is the protagonist. And readers of this web log will now also know that Stewart’s ecological best sellers, published long before Earth Day or the rise of the Environmental Consciousness, certainly helped bring that Consciousness about.

It is a milestone, too, in sharing those honors which he is increasingly gathering. The interpretive sign at Donner Summit is in place during the summer when the old highway he immortalized, U.S. 40, is open to traffic. The GRS ePlaque is now online at the Berkeley Historical Plaque site. (Someday, if funding is found and permission gathered, a physical plaque could be placed at the site of Stewart’s San Luis Road home.) Junlin Pan, Chinese scholar, is well along in her difficult translation of Names on the Land for an immense Chinese audience eager to learn about America. The sheet music for Philip Aaberg’s Earth Abides is soon to be published, thanks (like the US 40 sign) to the contributions of friends of Stewart. And, just perhaps, there’s an Earth Abides mini-series on the horizon. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to have been part of these things.

New GRS Interpretive Sign, Donner Summit, Historic U.S. 40, just above the Rainbow Bridge and Donner lake, and just below George R. Stewart Peak.

Along the way of the weblog, we’ve been reminded of how Stewart’s work still directs us, and encourages us. One of the great Stewart interpreters, for example, recently refused to sign an illegal loyalty oath in his unenlightened college system – a college system in a state whose voters salivate over the chance to pack weapons into diners, but apparently have little use for freedom of thought. Surely, that Stewart interpreter, that hero of thought, (a famous poet and author), was inspired by Stewart’s Year of the Oath. And as the ecosystem gets our attention through climate change, we can all be reassured by the ecological novels that humans can survive and transcend any such changes.

Stewart once wrote that although his scholarly life had often been a lonely
one, he had enjoyed some fine meetings along the way. That is true for this web log, as well. It’s brought us into conversations with a professor at Temple University, well-known author Christopher Priest, and several dedicated Stewart fans, who’ve all shared their experiences with Stewart’s books. It brought into the light a remarkable 1929 silent film of George R. Stewart and his parents, visiting his wife’s Wilson relatives in Pasadena – a film now copied, thanks to Ross Wilson Bogert and his son, and placed in the Bancroft, other Stewart collections, and the collections of the Stewart family.

So we’ve done a lot. And if this weblog needs to take a break, it’s earned the right to do it.

But the site will return, because there’s much yet to discuss. Stewart’s friends, for example, like C.S. Forester and Wallace Stegner and Bruce Catton and Frost and Sandburg and all the rest. And there will be news, of that you can be sure, about George R. Stewart and his continuing influence on us all.

George R. Stewart opened Ordeal By Hunger, in 1936, with a look at northern Nevada from a 200 mile high orbit – and described the scene so perfectly that when Astronaut Ed Lu, of ISS Expedition Seven, photographed it, Stewart’s words and Lu’s photos matched precisely. In Storm, Stewart ended the book with a view from Venus, in which his imagined watcher from that world saw no sign of storms disturbing our world. In both these books, Stewart – perhaps not realizing it, or perhaps realizing it, was preparing for that great event that took place 47 years ago today: the First Step on another world.

Working for NASA, and working with Star Trek artists, I’ve been honored with some exceptional gifts that memorialize that great day. I’ll celebrate by contemplating a wonderful gift given by Mike Okuda and another gift from NASA education days.

Take a moment, if you will, to honor those heroes, and all those who supported them, and the artists who inspire us to follow that dream. Artists like Mike Okuda, Rick Sternbach, Doug Drexler, Chesley Bonestell, David Hardy, and so many others, who fire our imaginations to design and build ships to explore other worlds. And literary artists like George R. Stewart, who prepared us wonderfully for that First Step.

By the way, NASA has restored the entire 3+hours that Armstrong and Aldrin spent on the moon on Apollo Day I. You can see it or download it here:

George R. Stewart’s last great book was Names On The Globe. He wrote another names book, American Given Names, before he died, (see earlier post about that book) but it was a dictionary and history of selected American names. Names On The Globe, like his classic and never-duplicated Names On The Land, was a history of place-naming – in this case, on a global scale. Here, in the last post about one of Stewart’s major publications, is a short essay about the book.

As in Names On The Land, Stewart has created a rich, complex, and deep – but easily understood – history of the process of place naming and of eras of place naming. Although it is supposedly about global naming, for many obvious and practical reasons GRS focuses on names in the areas we then called “western civilization.” He was not a Chinese or Japanese scholar, nor an African one, nor one who knew much of Aboriginal languages and culture. So he stuck with what he did know, with some brief chapters and comments about other regions of the world – assuming, probably, that others who came after him might add deeper histories of the naming in those places. Another reason for emphasizing “Western Civilization” is that he spoke or read many Indo-European languages, and had studied the history of most Indo-European countries (save India), so he could do the scholarship necessary to tease out the story of those names.

He takes a different approach to understanding place naming in this book, beginning with an examination of Man as a Namer. No recorded human society is without names. Some have evolved, GRS says, and others were bestowed. That is, in finding a previously unknown river its name “new river” evolved from the name of the original river. But Tamsen’s Town was a name that would have been bestowed on a place by settlers of travelers.

GRS continues by considering the mind of Man the Namer, as he explains the types of place names given, and the reasons for giving them. Some places, for example, were important to the namers because of incidents that happened there (Colt Killed Creek), others show possession (Wassa’s Town, Washington), others commemorate great (or small) events (Washington’s Crossing), and so forth.

In Part III, the longest section, GRS describes the names and naming in various places around the globe. In discussing Celtic names, in modern Europe, he points out that they were so well-connected with the land that they outlasted the names later given by the Romans, even if in altered form. But, as he points out, some of the “Celtic” names were probably originally given by earlier settlers.

Part IV is especially interesting, as Stewart considers important uses for ancient names – as tools for archaeologist, historians, and other scholars. Fittingly, since Stewart was, after all, a poet who wrote prose, he ends with a chapter about place names as useful tools for poets. “…The romantic appeal springs from sonorous syllables, and from a sense of the strange, bizarre, and wonderful. …” Stewart writes, noting that the poet or author needs not to know the meaning of the name to use it in his work. He quotes several famous poets who are known for the excellent use of such names, mentions Stephen Vincent Benet’s American Names. And he quotes, appropriately, the beautiful opening of his own Names on the Land, where he lists the wonderful names found here – Gunsight Pass, Lone Pine, Broken Bow, Roaring Run, and the others.

He finishes the book, as he sometimes finished his works, with a reflection on even the most prosaic seeming of names, Cowbridge. Did a cow fall from the bridge? Or refuse to cross? “….even the simple Cowbridge stirs the imagination,” George R. Stewart writes, as he finishes his great work.

The Author’s Note brings that work to a close. He will finish and publish his book on American given names, but this, he knows, is his last great work. So he honors his greatest friend, his wife, Theodosia, “who,” he writes, “might well be given the title Encourager of Books.”

And, thus, Opus Perfeci. For this study of the books of George R. Stewart, and his life, and related topics. Depending on what may come, I plan to add more as things of interest show up. And since Stewart wrote of Earth from the view of space, ground, ecosystem, language, history, literature, and so on, I still have a broad canvas to draw on.

In the meantime, many thanks to all of you – from nearly 60 countries, in every continent save Antarctica at last count – who have visited this site, read the posts, commented on them, and encouraged the work. You have been an inspiration.

The Berkeley Historical Plaque Project is dedicated to placing plaques at, or about, historic sites in Berkeley. Many of the plaques are physical, beautifully designed and placed at the locations interpreted. Others are posted at the Plaque Project’s website, as e-Plaques. The e-plaques allow people not in Berkeley to see the plaques, and learn about those being interpreted – a world wide version of the physical plaques, available to all. The e-Plaques also allow an honoring of sites and people for far less than the $1000 cost of the physical plaques.

George R. Stewart has now been honored with an ePlaque. With the permission of GRS Family Photo Collection Keeper Anna Evenson, the writing talents of Steven Finacom and company, and the leadership of Robert Kehlman, the plaque is now online at the link above. The Plaque gives a good overview of Stewart, his family, his life, and his work. It links to other honorings like the brilliant James Sallis essay on Earth Abides. (Sallis is a poet and author, the writer of the novella DRIVE which was made into an excellent movie.)

The Plaque also links to a radio script, written by Stewart’s colleague, Berkeley author “Anthony Boucher.” “Boucher,” nom de plume of William Anthony Parker White, created a series, The Casebook of Gregory Hood, which ran in the late 1940s. One episode, The Ghost Town Mortuary, “starred” George R. Stewart. Follow the link at the bottom of the plaque to read part of that script. (Some of the Gregory Hood episodes are online; unfortunately, The Ghost Town Mortuary is not.)

Eventually, it may be possible to put a physical plaque on what might be called “Ish’s House,” the house on “San Lupo Drive” which was the Stewart home when Earth Abideswas written, and Ish’s home in the novel. But that will need to wait until the time when there is funding available for it. Until then – and after – this is a fine piece of work, to be enjoyed by people in many places around the globe – and beyond, if someone on the International Space Station is a Stewart fan.

Earth Abides, George R. Stewart’s great classic – in 20 languages now, and never out of print in 77 years – thanks to Alan Ligda, who published the book for a few years through his Hermes Press when the Trade publisher dropped it and thus kept it in print until the Trade publisher realized its mistake – is long overdue for film treatment.

ALAN LIGDA, Publishing Hero

In the old days of movie-making, before computers and computer graphics, it would have been nearly impossible to film. But today, when The Martian can re-create a believable long-distance shot of the Martian surface with a few layers of computer graphics, the post-apocalyptic Earth of Stewart’s novel would be easy to re-create.

Today long films based on several linked novels – think Lord of the Rings – make it possible to film long and complex books like Earth Abides.EA, with its three sections (each in fact a novella) and its shorter interchapters between the three, could be filmed in a three part or five part version.

And Stewart’s Greek Chorus of observations, the beautiful bits of poetic prose set in italics which filter through the text, would work as well with a viewing audience as they do with a readership, to help them see Stewart’s overview of events.

So it is with great interest I hear rumors of a plan to film Earth Abides as a mini-series. A mini-series, it seems to me, is not as worthy of the book as a film or films would be; but remember that Lord of the Rings went through several anemic visualizations before Jackson made his mighty epic. So an Earth Abides mini-series would be a start; and if properly done, a fine start. It would certainly expand the fan base; and in so doing, eventually lead to an audience for a feature film or films.

Without giving away any secrets, I can confirm that another source has indicated the truth of the project. No more details than are on the IMDB page, but one small slight confirmation of the interest by filmmakers, and their first steps to make it so.

A distinguished author, geographer, and scholar, he’s won every award the University of Nevada, Reno, offers for scholars and teachers, been a senior Fulbright Scholar, and won many national teaching and geography awards. Starrs just stepped down as Chair of the Department of Geography.

Starrs was one of the few applicants accepted by Deep Springs College in 1975. (Around 400 apply; 13 are chosen.) Located in an isolated valley near the eastern border of central California, the College is a tiny two-year institution founded and funded by one of the pioneers of the transmission of AC electrical power, L.L. Nunn. Once enrolled, students are expected not only to achieve academic excellence; they must also govern the institution. Students also run its adjoining cattle ranch and farm to help support the college. When the ranch and farm are included, Deep Springs has the largest “campus” of higher learning on Earth. According to Wikipedia, The New Yorker describes the educational program as “a mix of Christian mysticism, imperialist elitism, Boy Scout-like abstinence, and Progressive era learning-by-doing, with an emphasis on leadership training and the formation of strong character.”

Deep Springs Students on a Cattle Drive

With an extraordinary natural setting – hot springs, faults, desert playas, huge mountain ranges – Deep Springs sensitizes its students to the Earth. As an isolated human community, with the remains of an historic mining community nearby, Native American cultures in the area, the small towns and highway culture along US 395 to the west and the cities of Reno and Las Vegas to the east, south, and north, it is also in a region which exemplifies the principal concerns of geography – the relationships of humans to the land – in settings that range from isolated rural to large urban communities.

Starrs spent a few years cowboying after Deep Springs. He finished his education at the University of California, earning an M.A. and PhD in Geography at Berkeley.

Cowboy Paul

Appointed an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1992, he quickly moved up into the highest ranks. He is now Regents and Foundation Professor of Geography, a high honor. Bilingual, he’s also held posts in Spain at the University of Salamanca and the Universidad of Córdoba.

He’s a brilliant scholar, with interests in many areas of geography. Currently he’s researching agriculture and land use change in California, the use of historic maps to reveal the exploitation of the environment, comparative frontier history, the geography of cattle ranching, and geography in popular culture, including music and film. Among other things.

Starrs is also a writer. One of his latest books, A Field Guide to California Agriculture, which he wrote in partnership with colleague Peter Goin, has been called a classic guide to the roadside agriculture of this state. Like Stewart’s books, it is a work of precision scholarship of the highest standard and a useful and readable work for a general audience.

I met Paul Starrs when Jack Stewart, distinguished Nevada geologist (and George R. Stewart’s son) called to ask if I could do a presentation about George Stewart’s life, work, and ideas, for Starrs’s Graduate Colloquium at UNR. Of course, I was honored, and agreed.

(The story of that adventure is worth telling. It was March; and to get to Reno I’d need to cross one of the legendary high mountain passes in the Sierra – and one of the snowiest – Donner Pass, made legend by George R. Stewart in Ordeal By Hunger. I decided to drive to Davis, California, stay at a friend’s house and take the train. At the last minute, though, he withdrew the invitation, so I had to book a motel instead. Nonplussed, I almost missed the talk. On the way back to Davis, the westbound Zephyr was delayed more than 5 hours. That meant another night in a motel. Fortunately the generous honorarium covered all the unexpected costs. It was an honor to talk about George R. Stewart at the University with the second largest collection of Stewart material, in the country he loved, with a distinguished scholar and award-winning teacher who admires Stewart’s work.)

Starrs has long been interested in Stewart, which is fitting for someone educated at Berkeley in geography and holding a professorship at Reno. Berkeley was Stewart’s home – he was an English Professor there – and also the home of the best geography department in the country in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Reno is surrounded by “Stewart Country”: Donner Pass, Donner Lake, the Black Rock Desert. The California Trail and historic U.S. 40 pass through Reno. Thanks to Special Collections’ Librarian Ken Carpenter, the Knowledge Center at Reno has the second largest collection of George R. Stewart material on Earth (after the Bancroft Library in Berkeley).

Starrs teaches Stewart. He also contributes to the increasing body of work about Stewart and his writing. In 2005, for example, Starrs and colleague Peter Goin – Goin is Chair of the Reno Art Department and a distinguished photographer – published a book about the place Stewart called “Sheep Rock”: Starrs and Goin, Black Rock. It is an interdisciplinary, in-depth look at the place where Stewart set his most elaborate geographic (or ecological) novel. Starrs describes it as “a loving look at how a place can be conveyed not just through words, but also through photographs, historical maps, and newly-done cartography.”

Any fan of George R. Stewart’s work is encouraged to read the Black Rock book. And to keep the work of Paul Starrs on their radar screen. He’s completing a new book about the geography of film noir and just starting an historical novel about sheep herders in 1600s Spain. “Think Lonesome Dove meets Don Quixote in the Iberian Peninsula,” writes Starrs. “There’s a potential there for an interesting read.”